Category: General

First off, the Kindle is the only device I that made my heart drop when it feel on the floor and broke.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s not a perfect device. Overall it feels slow and clunky. Simultaneously, it gets out of my way and is cool enough to let me get swallowed up by the book I’m reading.

Barnes & Noble’s recently announced Nook competitive offering solves a couple issues I have with the Kindle – while also introducing a couple more.

(Note – my thoughts here are based on the pictures @ BN.com – I haven’t played with one yet)

Where the Nook seems to have improved on the Kindle:

• Sleek looking pagination buttons
• WIFI

Where the Kindle still has the lead:

• Doesn’t show me the books I’m not reading (in distracting color) while I’m reading one (in monochrome).
• hardware keyboard

I’m also not seeing the benefit of the Nook’s ‘lending ebooks to a friend’ feature.

Lending books only makes sense if two things are true: a book is expensive, a book is scarce. The function of the internet and ebooks is to render both of these false.

60 minutes of Jungletrain on a spin bike while Ghost in the Shell plays on an IMAX screen.

Many in the web design community re-designing CraigsList.org since it launched [1, 2].

Each one of these efforts feels like missing the part that makes CraigsList special to me – it’s the simplest thing that could possibly work.

Anything more – while perhaps adding value – absolutely adds overhead.

If only in the number of decisions that need to be made, communicated, and maintained.

“If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.” – Craig Newmark

Seems to me if a designer wanted to get their CraigsList re-design recommendation implemented – they’d find a couple superfluous things in the existing site and kill them.

Who’s up for the challenge?

” I delegate, work all the time, hardly sleep, totally ignore politics, sports and pop culture, neglect my family too much and probably don’t do any of my jobs as well as I could. But these are exciting days, and if ever these was a time to be overextended this is it.” – Chris Anderson, Wired Editor

“Our parents and grandparents spent their Cognitive Surplus watching television. That’s a thing of the past… a historical accident of the old factory-worker age meeting the modern mass-media age. Of course it wouldn’t last forever. We humans as a species were designed to compete, not to sit around on our asses.”

“Welcome to the Overextended Class, People…” – Hugh McLeod

I did a quick project inventory and hit a baker’s dozen without missing a beat.
Sure helps explain my 18-hours a day for most of the summer – and unexpectedly – a new steadfast calm.

Attention web designers –

Sure. Helvetica is a fine typeface.

Just stop using it in your CSS stylesheets. Or at least stop specifying it first. Second. Or third.

There are more readable, more appropriate, and more distinctive, available for your website.
If you must specify it, how about putting it on the other side of ‘sans serif‘?

Yes, the same goes for you – Arial, Georgia, Verdana, and Times New Roman.

I’m floored it’s been 3 weeks since I’ve written anything here. Feels more like 3 days.

I’ve been working with a number of very cool start-ups and Kernest is the only one I’m able to talk about. Thankfully, all 3 are on track to go public this month. And I hope at least one does so I can get that much closer to my 2009 goal of releasing 1 revenue-generating project every 6-months.

Since I’ve got a few minutes – and it’s June – let’s see how I’ve been doing on the rest of those goals:

Daily walks – yes.
Inbox Zero – no. not even close.
Weekly Project Review – no.
Banishing To Do lists – no.
A Monthly First Crack Podcast – I’m ahead 1 month and have 2 prepped for editing
Quarterly small project release – behind a project

On the big ideas: I’ve definitely spent more time writing code and with people. Only slightly more time reading books. Everything else has remained static.

That felt good. Glad I took this moment.

The title of this post comes from #9 on this list.

Admittedly, I haven’t watched any of the WolframAlpha demos. I could have no idea how it’s supposed to be used. Either way, I didn’t find it very helpful with the handful of questions that immediately sprang to mind.

I expect any new service to immediately show a unique characteristic. It doesn’t need to be fully baked. Just there.

"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input" probably shouldn’t be that.

There’s an “easy” way for me (and I suspect others) to be immediately hooked on a new search find engine, display new, valuable, and unexpected results in a simple vanity search.

Though, the biggest challenge WolframAlpha has isn’t whether or not it is “sure what to do with my input” – its that I keep wanting to call it WolframHart

Maybe I’m doing this wrong.

Have you had success getting answers from WolframAlpha?

UPDATE 18 May 2009
Yes, according to Marisa Taylor at WSJ Blogs, I’m searching all wrong. WolframAlpha is for equations, numbers, calculations, etc.

Things I imagine the computers of mathematicians, physicists might need regularly.

Then again, given how advanced our mathematics is – there must be an equation for finding my keys.

If you listen to Minnesota Public Radio, perhaps you’ve caught the promotional spot from the National Pork Board declaring “cooked pork is safe” from the recent flu outbreak.

I already assumed cooked pork was safe. Now, an organization financed by pork producers is telling me it’s safe – the conflict of interest and dismissive tone makes me doubt it is safe.

I understand the NPB’s desire to say something. Unfortunately, this current spot shows they’re clearly (and unnecessarily) playing defense¹

What could the NPB say that wouldn’t set off my pigshit detector?

1. Acknowledge it as a general health issue.
   “National Pork Board reminds you help prevent the spread of viruses like the H1N1 flu by covering your mouth when coughing and throughly washing your hands.”
2. Embrace it as an issue and be transparent about your direct actions.
   “National Pork Board invites you to visit pork.org for a live updated map as we check our all member farms for signs of the H1N1 virus.”
3. Nothing.
   This doesn’t impact how people normally interact with their products, why should they comment? Kudos to the comment-free representatives of Tyson Foods & Hormel Foods cited in this AP article.

Any one of these 3 approaches feels better to me.

Are you in PR? I’d love your thoughts on this issue.

1. And that they may not know their target audience. According to this AP article – the $5b/yr of US raised pork is exported – with countries banning the import of pork. I’m neither banning it’s importation nor contributing to that $5b/yr.

As a kid, I watched The Right Stuff more times than I can count.

It’s a fun story about the beginnings of the NASA space program and test pilots. But mostly it’s about egos.

Lately, the opening’s been stuck in my head.

“There was a demon that lived in the thin air; they said anyone who challenged him would die. Their controls would seize up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter.” – Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff.